Some of South Africa’s
endangered and extinct
species
By: VG grade 10 History class
The Endangered and Extinct
Cape Mountain Zebra
Mountain Lion
Knysna Sea Horse
The Cape Warthog
The Ceolasanth
Quagga
Cape Mountain Lion
HISTORY..
John Spence searched for origins of the cape lions about thirty years
ago.The Cape lion were thought to be extint during the regions of
the 1850s. His search ended a year ago when he received pictures of
a magnificent black-maned lion at the Novosibrisk Zoo in Central
Siberia.
As a young man, Spence had read about such lions roaming the
slopes of Table Mountain and Signal Hill in what is now the modern
city of Cape Town. His imagination was fired by stories of massive
lions attempting to scale the walls of the 17th-century Dutch castle
that was built by Commander Jan van Riebeeck, the chis powerful
predator roams the Americas, where it is also known as a puma,
cougar, and catamount.
They prey on dears and hunt at night.
WHERE?
They were found in the cape province also in the sub sahara of
Africa. Most of them were found in cape town onj table mountain this
tells us that they lived through cold and rough climate conditions.
WHY?
Back
Trophy hunters and farmers hunted the lions to extinction
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/07/0726_capelion.ht
ml
http://bigcats2.tripod.com/Extinct_Cats.html
Knysna Sea Horse
What is the knysna sea horse?
The knysna sea horse is an unusual sea horse that is only found in South Africa and
occurs in estuaries. It has the most limited distribution and is put down as the most
threatened sea horse.
How does it look like?
Its tail is strong and is adapted to seize and grasp, it also has a wound in its
tail around the hold last of plant material. It has the ability to change color
and blend with its surroundings because of this they are known as the
chameleons of the sea, like chameleons their eyes can also move
independently.
Extinction of the sea horse
In this present century, the things that sea horses were able to do led to the threats of its
extinction because humans have found it necessary to collect and keep them in
captivity. Sea horses are in demand as aphrodisiacs cast & they have been collected for
the curio industry.
Why the sea horses were extinct
The reason behind the extinction was because of their small brood size because of the
males which meant the young would depend on them for survival . Others can`t
reproduce until they find a new partner , low population density and nature rates of
adult mortality low and making fishing a new pressure.
How the sea horses were extinct
Two years ago the a research was done on Knysna sea horses by the Sea Horse
Research Group from Rhodes University to find the population of sea horses as a
warning system for problems in the lagoon which is important for the Oyster Industry ,
and financial benefits which led to their extinction.
REFERENCES:
= www.springerlink.com/index/G95301JH553N5R57.pdf
= www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2002/september/seahorse.htm
= www.arkive.org/knysna-seahorse/hippocampus.../info.html
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The Ceolacanth
Description
The coelacanth is an endangered species. It has large blue eyes,
silver blue scales with white markings. It’s up to 1, 8 meters long
in length and 95 kg in weight. It has bony, meaty, jointed fins,
because of this that is why it was thought that it could’ve have
walked. It normally has up to 5 baby fish, so they give too little
birth; the coelacanth itself is very rare. They have paired fins and
have a greater life span. Since they can’t absorb oxygen quickly
they swim very slowly and they can die quickly when they are
brought up to the surface.
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The Cape Warthog
(Phacochoerus aethiopicus)
WHAT IS IT?
It is an extinct animal (mammal) that originally came from South Africa (Cape
Province). It is quite different from other hogs but it has similar properties to a Somali
Warthog.
WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?


Its skull is smaller but broader than a regular or normal warthog.
There aren’t any incisors in a Cape warthog but then in a normal warthog you
would find 2 in the upper jaw and 6 in the lower.
HOW AND WHY IS IT EXTINCT?
THE Cape warthog became extinct due to 2 factors that had a huge influence on it.
The expansion of the Cape colony increased the demand of pig meat (pork) and they
were exterminated in the Cape region soon after the arrival of the Dutch colonists.
They were mainly extinct in Namaqualand which was before the settlement of the
Dutch in the Cape. Many would say the large population of the Cape warthog was
exterminated by the Khoi and San by this in a manner is contradictory because it is
believed that the San and Khoi would have rejected pig meat. However in 1896 the
Cape warthog suffered a lot from the rinderpest epidemic
WHEN DID IT BECOME EXTINCT?
The Cape warthog approached its extinction in the end of the 19th century.
REFERENCES
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
cape warthog
www.wikiansnswers.com
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The QUAGGA
• Origin:
• The name quagga comes from the khoikhoi the first inhabitants of
southern Africa. In khoi language quagga means zebra in English it
also makes the same sound as a zebra. The quagga originated from
a population of plain zebra. Its closest taxonomy (classification) is
the giraffe.
• What is the qagga?
• Extinct type of zebra. It formerly inhabited open plains is South
Africa, where its range overlapped that of the common zebra.
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The QUAGGA
Quagga
• Origin:
• The name quagga comes from the khoikhoi the first inhabitants of
southern Africa. In khoi language quagga means zebra in English it
also makes the same sound as a zebra. The quagga originated from
a population of plain zebra. Its closest taxonomy (classification) is
the giraffe.
• What is the qagga?
• Extinct type of zebra. It formerly inhabited open plains is South
Africa, where its range overlapped that of the common zebra.
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The QUAGGA
• Origin:
• The name quagga comes from the khoikhoi the first inhabitants of
southern Africa. In khoi language quagga means zebra in English it
also makes the same sound as a zebra. The quagga originated from
a population of plain zebra. Its closest taxonomy (classification) is
the giraffe.
• What is the qagga?
• Extinct type of zebra. It formerly inhabited open plains is South
Africa, where its range overlapped that of the common zebra.
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• What did it look like?..
• Its coat was sandy brown.
• Its legs and tail whitish: only its head, neck and
shoulders were dark-striped.
• Living in herds and competing with domestic sheep for
grass, Quaggas were exterminated in the 19th century;
the last died in1883 in Amsterdam Zoo. Recent analyses
of DNA from a Museum specimen indicated that the
Quagga is almost certainly a variant of the common
zebra rather than a separate species as was once
believed. Quaggas are classified in the phylum
Chordata, Subphylum Vertebrate, class Mammalia, order
Perissodactyla, family Equidae.
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Where? Habitat
The quagga lived on the drier parts of
South Africa on grassland. They lived
between the Orange River boarder
and the great kei river boarder.
Basically in South Africa’s Cape
Province and southern part of the
Orange Free State
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Extinction:
• There are two known theories to the extinction of the Quagga. They
were hunted for their skin and meat until their kind was extinct that’s
the first theory. The second one is that over time the Quagga
encounted evolution and changed and is no longer recognizable.
• Conservation:
• No attempts were made to save the quagga, no one knew it was
endangered until they saw the mare at the zoological society of
London’s in regents park in 1870 that was when the photographed
the only quagga alive.
• Today there is a quagga project going on in south Africa were
people are putting all their knowledge in bringing back the quagga.
So far they are breeding with selected plains zebras, they doing this
because the quagga was known to have a very similar DNA to the
zebra and if they breaded selected zebras maybe they would
reproduce zebras with the colours of the quagga.
• References:
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quagga.
• www.petermaas.nl/extinct/speciesinfo/quagga.htm
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